CLOGTHORPE HAS FUN WITH FUNDING

Keith Waterhouse

Last updated at 00:00 10 March 2003

Cllr Elland asked whether first off he could inquire through the Chair what the good people of Clogthorpe made of the scheme?

Chair (Cllr Bulge) asked what the thump it had got to do with the good people of Clogthorpe. As always, the good people of Clogthorpe could like it or lump it, although Chair would not wish to be quoted on that.

Cllr Tweedyman asked if Council gave the nod to this Regional Assembly, was there a drink in it?

Chair said if Cllr Tweedyman meant would there be an adequate funding package, there would be funding coming out of the borough's lugholes. There would be funding from Europe, funding from central government, funding from the council tax, funding from the county council, funding, Chair did not doubt, from the National Lottery.

Cllr Parkin asked what, in round figures, all this funding would amount to, and whether there would be sufficient grant-aid to finance a Focus Group fact-finding mission to all over the United States, where these regional assemblies had been a reality since the year dot?

Cllr Hopcraft said a lot depended on what Prescott's office was designating the proposed seat of government. Cllr Hopcraft had heard on the grapevine Newcastle.

Chair said Newcastle his (Chair's) backside. There was only one centre from which to run the North-East, and that centre was Clogthorpe, gateway to the Dales and home of Clogthorpe Ales.

THAT being a proposal, Cllr Parkin said he would second it. This new body would want staffing, and that staff would need office facilities. You could not throw half a brick in Clogthorpe without it going through the window of an empty office block.

Cllr Parkin's son-in-law Jason, the estate agent, could put Focus Group on to some bargains, 15 per cent off for cash sale.

Cllr Hopcraft said the new body being the seat of North-East government, it would need somewhere to sit. Cllr Hopcraft opined that the way to snatch the laurels from Newcastle was to build summat on the line of Stormont, with statues, fancy columns, long avenues and that.

Chair said he knew the very site - the old public library.

Cllr Parkin said to the best of his knowledge Clogthorpe did not possess an old public library.

Chair said it would do when the present one had been closed down and the library facilities downloaded to the Clement Attlee Overspill Conurbation.

Chair's son Gareth had an excellent track record at pulling down public libraries or converting them into theme pubs.

He also knew where he could get his hands on a large quantity of marble for the Regional Assembly's flooring.

Cllr Nepworth asked if he could ask, on a point of information, what LOGTHORPE District Council's Ways and Means Committee, in its capacity as the North-East Regional Assembly Focus Group, convened last night in the back bar of the Snivelling Coalman to consider the implications of this proposed new tier of local government.

would this Regional Assembly do when it was at home?

Chair said do, do, what was Cllr Nepworth rabbiting on about? It wouldn't do owt. It would create jobs. Lads and lasses leaving school, instead of mindlessly flipping hamburgers, would be doing summat useful like manning the Regional Assembly call centre or staffing its computer terminals. But as for the Assembly itself doing owt, what did Cllr Nepworth think the District Council was for?

Cllr Nepworth said all right, then, could he ask another question? Was Chair empowered to use Regional Assembly seed funding for the purpose of getting them in?

Chair said he thought Cllr Nepworth would never ask. What was everybody having?

Ugly mugs

IT MAY well seem trivial to say so at such a critical stage in our affairs, but whenever I see a photograph of a terrorist suspect I cannot help marvelling at what an ugly lot they are.

The pictures of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, allegedly the brain behind the 9/11 attacks, make Gerry Adams look like Cary Grant. It is not that his face generates evil - it generates an unfocused seediness.

He has the air of a man who doesn't eat properly.

But then they all do. Out of the whole mixed bunch, there is not one I should care to meet in a dark alley, or even a well-lit one.

Are there no handsome terrorists?

Osama Bin Laden, I suppose, has a striking presence, but no one would enter him for a beauty contest.

Which raises the chicken-and-egg question: do they become terrorists because they're so plug-ugly, or does the practice of terrorism turn them that way?

Having said which, given the FBI's record, it could well turn out that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is a harmless suburbanite who clips parrots' claws for a living.